At UFC 286 this past Saturday, Welsh fighter Jack Shore made his featherweight debut against the London appearance record holder, Makwan Amirkhani.
In his last outing, Shore tasted defeat for the first time in his 17 fight career with that resulting in him wanting to move up a weight class from bantamweight. With Shore always being one of the more promising prospects at 135, it was going to be interesting to see where he would fit in at featherweight.
With that being said, the performance he put on against the Finnish, Amirkhani, was a promising one for his run in the division.
It could be argued that he could’ve fought a ranked opponent, but because of it being his featherweight debut, it was questionable if he’d look like a natural 145lber.
Shore though feels as though he fit in well and didn’t feel small against Amirkhani, he said: “I felt like a featherweight I felt solid, when we locked up I didn’t feel out strengthened or out sized. I committed to this fully last August so I’ve still got a lot of time yet to grow into the weight class.
“But I don’t want to come full circle and end up doing at featherweight what I was doing at bantamweight and cutting a sh*tload of weight and depleting myself I want to have that middle ground where I can cut a little bit of weight so that I’m not undersized but I still want to keep it sensible so that I’ve got that speed and endurance, because I do feel like I’ve got some of the best cardio in the UFC…” Shore said.
Jack Shore wasn’t the only one who was fighting this training camp though. The 28-year-old opened up about his fathers fight against cancer which began during this camp.
“It’s been a tough camp, you know with my old man going through (what he’s going through), he’s such a strong out there character, we’re used to him not missing a session in the gym and on our case constantly so for him to have to be absent at times because of the treatment he’s had to have, I mean he’s literally finished chemo (chemotherapy) two weeks ago, he had a week of rest and it’s fight week.
“At the beginning when I got offered the fight I didn’t want to take it because of the time scale.” Shore said.
The Welsh prospect though did take the fight and made his entire family proud and will now take time out to look after his father.
Watch the entire post-fight scrum with Jack Shore above.
